Welcome to the Real Photo Show. My guests today are more wonderful attendees from the 2025 Chico Review. And they are, in order, Ryder Collins, Carrie MacArthur, Richard Dectera, David Bowman, and Andrew Owen. And we have some fantastic conversations about the work that they brought to this photobook Retreat and the Chico Review is the premier photo book retreat organized by the Charcoal Book Club. The Chico Review takes place over six nights at Chico Hot Springs Resort near Livingston, Montana. Selected applicants spend the week with over 20 of the most influential and creative photographers, bookmakers, gallerists, museum curators, and photo book publishers in the industry. And just a side note, for those of you who are at the 2025 Chica Review, or for those of you who know Michelle Arcila Michelle was selected as a Photoworks Senior Fellow and she will be paired with Christine Potter as her advisor. So that is fantastic news and I'm really excited for you, Michelle. So as in previous recordings of attendees, I've linked to where they are in the show. You can just CL click on that if you're looking for someone in particular, of course. I hope you listen to everyone. I've also linked to their websites and their Instagram accounts so you can check out their work before, during or after listening to their part of the episode. Just a few quick announcements. Primary Exposure Fatherly Photographer the group show that I am in with some amazing photographers is up through May 30th at Affirmation Arts. You can check that out@affirmationarts.com I will also be in a solo show of work that I made in New Jersey in the mid-1990s and that will be at Fordham University. More to come later. And lastly, my students at Mercer County Community College who are part of the Gallery Club are curating their own show for the grand reopening of the JKC Gallery in Trenton, New Jersey. For those of you who have followed this show for a while, know that I am reopening the gallery, which I am both excited and a little nervous about taking on more work, but more on the excited side. Uh, so I will post more about that on the Real Photo Show Instagram account once I have more details on the dates. I will also post that on the JKC Gallery Instagram account and if you haven't followed that or maybe you left that when we shut the gallery down, it is back as JKC Gallery. All one word. So check that out on Instagram. And finally, for those of you who might be wondering when the next episode of Photo Work with Sasha Wolff will be coming out, it Will be soon, I promise. We have at least four guests lined up. We had a little bit of a dry spell with booking some guests, but we do have guests lined up. I'm very excited about that. And of course, Sasha and I have been both very busy. Sasha with the foundation work, and there was APAD and of course, Sasha's regular job of representing artists. And there's everything I do, which keeps me pretty busy as well. So it's coming. All right, everyone, thank you so much for listening. Enjoy the show and we will talk.
My name is Ryder Collins. I live in Seattle, Washington. I'm here at the Chico Review. My project that I brought is called Fair Season, and it's about Washington's obsession with county fairs. Every year in Washington state, there's about 69 different county fairs around the state. So for the last few years, I've been putting this long term project together that's in a nutshell, documenting those fairs.
Are the fairs something you grew up with?
Yes and no. I was born in Los Angeles, actually. My grandparents lived up north in Washington state. And so every summer I'd go up and spend kind of the summer with them. And they were in this organization called the Grange, Just kind of a fading old farm organization.
Like a 4H kind of thing sort of.
It's more of like a cooperative of farmers.
Oh, okay.
And anyway, I spent a lot of summers, the fair booth with my grandparents at their grange fair booth. So that's my exposure to it. Beyond that, I'm a city kid, though.
Yeah. Are these fairs similar to other state fairs? I mean, is it people showing off their cattle and their pigs?
Very much.
And all kinds of fried foods and things like that?
Very much. One of the things that I'm most drawn to about this is kind of like the Grange organization that I was saying earlier is that the agricultural side of the fair, which I think is kind of the root and the heart of the fair, is fading away. It's not dead, of course, but it's just I've been doing this project for three years, and in that short amount of time, I've even noticed year after year, there seems to be less people showing livestock, animals, and agriculture. Part of the fair is kind of fading away. I think the fair grounds and the people that run the fairs are more leaning into, like the carnival. And the commercial aspect of the fair, I think is in order to survive financially.
Similar things are happening with, like, the New York State Fair and all. Like, it becomes more of a Six Flags kind of idea as opposed to sort of like, grassroots kind of family events, things like that, Right?
Yeah, exactly. And so I just am obsessed with documenting while it's still around this beautiful, like, traditional agricultural part of what I think is a history of Washington state.
Yeah, yeah. And of course, it is that more grassroots and local farms and local ranches that made state fairs individual, made them different, like, gave them their own flavor.
It was a way for like each county to show off.
Exactly, yeah.
The latest and greatest, even in, like, farming technology back in the day was something that, you know, was kind of shown off at the fair.
Right. So how does that appear visually? Is it. Is there comparison? Is there sort of new and old in the work? Like, how do you. How does it come through? Or are you just really looking at that very Americana idea of the state fair?
It's maybe a little bit of both. So I guess visually, if I'm thinking about the project visually, the way that I've thought about the fair is that there's kind of. There's kind of the agricultural side of the fair and then there's also the carnival side of the fair. And so I have a lot of pictures focusing on both of those avenues. Spent a lot of time photographing livestock auctions and shows and all the behind the scenes prep that goes into that. At the same time, I've spent a lot of time photographing the carnivals and some of the shows that happen at the fair. One particular year, I lived with a traveling carnival for about eight days, and we went to three different fairs. So I was living with those guys. And so I got to photograph kind of their way of life and all the intense work that goes along with putting together a carnival, you know?
Yeah, well, carnies have this, I think, cartoonish reputation as being like, outside the law and like, you know, very different life.
It's not an incorrect observation. At least something I've noticed at this particular carnival that I was with a lot of them. I don't know how well they would do, like, functioning in another job situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the other thing with fairs is that there's often rodeos.
Oh, yeah.
Often there's a rodeo, at least in Washington state, that happens with the county fair. There's also like demolition derbies that happen. And so there's just a lot of stuff to like, deep dive. Yeah. So it's kind of like an expansive project. Visually. It's a lot of things.
And what is this color work? It's all black and white.
Yeah, black and white. Shot mostly with like a 28 or a 35 millimeter. There's some 50 mil portraits sprinkled in there, but. And it's a digital project. I had some. Maybe some film photographs in there that I scrapped in the years of refining the work.
And, of course, you're here at Chico, and you must be thinking books or a book and sequencing and all that. And do you imagine these as separate sort of chapters, or is it going to be sequenced in a way where things are organized by what's happening or where you are?
I've always envisioned it as, like, chapters. So I've got a chapter, let's say, visually, on the livestock stuff. Got a chapter on some of the rodeo stuff, the demolition derby stuff, the carnies at work, and then the other thing, the random fare, things that happen, the shows and the other things like that. You know, I'm at this point, I think maybe the challenge is that I'm always looking for. I can't bring every photograph to Chico. I only have a limited amount of time to show.
Sure.
And so I need somebody that's interested. I'm hoping that someone's interested in the work, that's a publisher and will want to see the rest of the photographs, because I brought all of them with me. Smaller prints to look at.
Yeah, Yeah.
I think with the right person, it could turn into a book. I've always envisioned it that way.
What's the feedback been like while you're here?
The feedback's been overall positive, very much. You know, this photo. You know, there's a. I've noticed. I've been to a few portfolio reviews, and there's a very fickle nature of photography.
Of course. Of course.
Of course.
You know, it's like, you know, getting curated for something. Yeah.
Some of the individual things of, like, oh, I don't like this image, or I like this image. I kind of really don't much attention to. Yeah.
Because it's so fickle. Yeah.
I'm more interested in what the work means as a whole, and I think in general, the feedback's been really good. To be very honest with you. I'm feeling a little bit right now. What's next? Because I've tried to stack a lot of my reviews with publishers, and so. Yeah, I mean, I just had a review a little while ago with one of the publishers, and I think it went really well. I said the work was strong and kind of this feeling of like, well, that was it. 20 minutes was up and I don't really know what to do next.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, okay. I just feel A little lost, actually.
Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right. Yeah, yeah.
Well, I believe there's a lot more to go beyond all of it.
I'm here to learn. I wrote a little. This is silly, but I wrote a piece of paper, a note on my door. I'm staying at the lodge here, and right above the doorknob is a note, and it says, remember to grow as a photographer and remember to, you know, from your experiences here and your intention to just keep making photographs that are just meaningful and impactful. So those are the things that I like. I won't let myself leave the door until I read that.
Yeah.
So beyond all of my confusion, that's my goal for being here. I'm so grateful, obviously.
Yeah. And so you've done this before and, you know, I mean, there are things to learn from what, you know, you can't use.
Yeah.
As there are things to learn from what you're, you know, looking to learn more about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Absolutely. All right, good.
Well, so it's only day one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Who knows what's going to be happening in the next four or five days.
That's right. That's a lot more to go. Well, nice meeting you. Nice to meet you again. Right.
Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
Oh, my pleasure. Thank you. All right, bye.
Okay, bye.
Hi, my name is Karen McArthur. I'm from Brooklyn, New York. I've been a photographer for most of my life, and I've been studying dreaming and symbolism for the last five years, and that I've been sort of shooting photographs alongside the dream work that I've been studying. Yeah, yeah.
When you say for most of your life, you mean like, high school?
Yeah, I was like, 12.
Oh, before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I just looked through a lens and was like, oh, I can just show you.
Where did that come from? Did someone hand you a camera?
Yeah, My dad was always a hobbyist, and he had a really good sense of how to tell a joke in a photo.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah. He would take these candids of us that were very. Just like a perfect candid. And that is. I think a lot of. I make money as a wedding photographer, so that is maybe my greatest influence as a photographer was just his candids of us as kids.
Yeah. So you start photography really early. You were there programs in high school classes in high school and all?
Yeah, I went to. I got. I came up through the Catholic school system. So for high school, I insisted on going to the public school because they had a Dark room. And then when I got. My mom didn't really want me to go to public school. And she was like, when I got to freshman year and they wouldn't let me in the dark room, she was like, oh, no. And so she marched in and got me into photo class my freshman year.
And then I. Yeah, because usually those elective classes are for, like, juniors and seniors. That's what I did.
She was like, if you're going. If this is what we're doing.
Yeah.
And then.
Is this in New York?
Right. I lived right outside of Philadelphia, which made it like a half hour. I was really, really close to Philadelphia, so I would also take the bus because I went to public school. She was like, well, I'll pay for photo classes on the weekends. So I also took stuff on the weekends, studied. I went to Drexel University for college.
Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. Andrea Modica.
She interviewed for her tenure position as I was a senior. So I used to meet her, but I didn't get to study with her.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
She's a gem.
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah.
But it was a testament to how good the program was. I think that she came when she did because it was a really, really, really well done program.
I felt, oh, nice. Yeah. That's excellent. So where does the commercial wedding photography come in? When does that come in?
As soon as I. Before I graduated. I think people. You know that thing where people ask you to shoot their weddings. And my work was always in the realm of, like, magical realism and sort of like the soft feminine. And I also was really interested in family dynamics. And so it felt like a very. I didn't have a lot of shyness around saying yes at that time. It was still sort of looked down upon as a photography profession.
I know.
Yeah. But I had a. Had seen a lot of work I really admired and I thought. I don't know about that. And maybe aperture. I don't know. Pdn had done a piece on some of the, like, best documentary. Had done a piece on, like, some of the best documentary photographers. And I just thought, this is a thing, you know, And I always thought I could make money, that I. It just made sense for me. I didn't have the personality for commercial photography. Yeah, yeah.
So I did PR while I was an undergrad and I continued with the. Some pr and I did a few weddings, but I was better at the PR and it was simpler. Like one and done. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly, exactly.
Free bars.
Yeah.
So it sounds like you don't Make a huge distinction between the wedding work and your personal work in terms of the style and what you bring and how you're doing it.
I went through some portfolio reviews in the last two or three years that kind of helped me. I've always. The heart of the way I want to shoot, I've always been doing in my wedding work, and yet I had a hard time accepting or believing that that's what clients would want. And so I was always doing it. But then I was also shooting what felt a little more traditional and recently went through all of that work in order to sort of realign myself. And in the process of doing that, I think I also was able to reconnect with what I've been working on on my. On the personal end.
Yeah.
It sounds like you. You had a lot of support at home for what this field, the way. Yeah. What you did. And that is empowering. And it sounds like you're making work that it's also meant to be empowering in some ways.
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah.
There's an element of inspiration that I like to lead with for sure.
Yeah. Who do you think of as the audience?
I've been playing with these images with dreaming in two different forms, because in the one hand, I have one foot in the photography world, and on the other hand, I'm literally dancing in shamanic circles and dream circles and yoga and meditation world. And so I think both are really influential in terms of, like, how I move through the world. So it's before I was sort of like, this is a traditional photography book from the lens of trying to be in a dreamscape. And then I've been playing with the images in the form of a tarot deck and have dropped them into the structure of a tarot deck.
Yeah.
So I'm kind of in limbo at the moment when I think about who would like them as a tarot deck versus who would like it as a photo book. They're two strong subcultures that would understand the two different veins.
When you think of your mother and father looking at the work, how do you think they would look at.
Would want to look at the work? My mom has passed.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Thank you. But she would get it. She would really appreciate it. She would have strong opinions. My dad would also appreciate it, but he doesn't have a lot of patience. But he does understand it all. But, for example, before I got to. To the place of making a book, I've been. I started out making a calendar that was just for my Family. And that has evolved where I have been doing this annual calendar for seven years now. And a lot of my favorite photos are in there, and my family really gets it. And they have to live with each photo for a month.
Yeah. Because of the calendar.
But it's also this weird community because I'll get texts like, I love February.
February's hot.
Yeah, exactly. But that did give me the sense of, like, oh, it's an oracle. You know, I'm like, planning. So it's. Yeah, that's really good.
That's really nice. And so how has the feedback been? How have you been doing here?
Really good people, definitely. I've seen two people so far. The first person really understood the tarot structure, so we talked about it from that perspective.
Who's that?
Shayna Lopez.
Oh, sure.
Yeah. She really. She was like, keep me posted on this. And then.
Nice.
Brad Zeller was like, this is a photo book. But he appreciated the tarot. But he also was like, these are worthy of a photo book.
You actually had two people who have sort of very wide experience with photography. Like, not just sort of like a photo book here. Not just the photo book, not just the gallery, but, like, very wide experiences with photography. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I feel really grateful so far. I feel actually really relieved to have two done and have them have two very different opinions. So now I don't have to give too much weight to either. Yeah. I can kind of start to weigh.
Figure it out later.
And I'm getting a better sense of how to present the physical materials I brought, because it can be confusing because I brought some, like, potential tarot spreads, but I also brought the prints. So. Yeah, I feel, like.
All good, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm very excited. This is a really exciting experience.
Yeah. Well, now I'll get to see everything on the night when everybody's just.
Yes, I'm very excited for that, too.
Really great meeting you. Thank you.
Same to you.
Yeah. Good luck with the rest of the week.
Thank you. This was less painful than I imagined.
Not so bad.
You're very generous.
Thank you. Bye.
Thank you.
My name is Richard Dakterra. I'm from Brooklyn, New York, and this is my first. First Chico review. I've been photographing since high school. Not to date myself, but I started college with film and I ended on digital, so a good 20 years ago. Yeah, I've been in the last, you know, maybe five, 10 years, taking it much more seriously. And I've been working on a body of work now for about five years. That I'm bringing here to battle test.
Yeah, I think you told me you, you come from the film industry, right?
No, I actually for a living run it at a tech company.
Oh, that's it. Okay.
Yeah, yeah. So my job is very logical based, you know, metrics and so, you know, this is a completely different headspace to go into, but feels just as natural to me.
Oh, that's good.
Which is great.
Yeah. So what did you bring to Chico?
So my body of work, it working title now is the Swell. And I grew up in Rockaway, New York, which is a coastal town on the southern tip of Queens.
People don't know there's beaches, Rockaway, Eastern Rock, East Rockaway.
Yeah, like the Ramones song.
Yeah, that's right. And also that Queens dips down to the southern part on Long Island. It's so unusual. Yeah, yeah. It's a rare area.
And there's a big park there in Reese park named after the photographer Chico Breeze and Fort Tilden, which is an old army fort. And so this beach, my mom and my dad there at this beach, I grew up on that beach. So my mother had passed away five, almost six years ago. And I started making a body of work of Rees park and Fort Tilden. And Reese park now is going through a big renovation. So it's never going to be the same, it's going to be much more modernized. And so this body of work in particular is about a. It's about grieving and how grief comes in like a wave or like a tide. So it comes in, it distorts reality a little bit. You get disoriented and then it recedes and it's very slow. It comes and it goes, not after the initial shock of what you're grieving about. And so the purpose of this work is I want to kind of bring someone through that wave and so of an up and a down. You know, I made the work while grieving. I feel, and you know, it's hard for me as someone who's very. Have to be very logical. Most of my time I felt like this work revealed itself to me and I had to kind of understand it. And basically I made a couple of images that just kind of clicked and I was like, okay, these are the starting, these are the starting points to. That would build everything upon it. And what I do is I very subtly, for the images of grief, try to recreate infrared photography, but not very heavy handed. So I distort the greens a little bit, make it more red and it's just enough where you don't notice it when you read go through the book, but it's enough to tickle the back.
Of your brain that's something a little off or a little different, not represented the way you expect it to.
Yeah, but Chico's been so helpful with the organizing of the pages, maybe resequencing it, being asked questions. The common thread in the book is the color red. I don't know why. It just happens to be what it is. And so I have to marinate on that.
Do you think of this work as personal expression of grief or that there's a universality that you want to share?
I'm being very careful to make it a universal because you. I don't want it to be about grieving this person. I want it to be about the feeling of grief. Because you don't just grieve when someone passes away. You grieve when you lose a job or when Pier 24 closes. You know, actually the.
Yeah, I get that completely. Grief is. Is broader. It could be something as simple as a child entering a different stage of life. You grieve what they were before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Relationships, everything. Yeah, yeah. No, that's really interesting. And so though it's infrared, but there is color.
Yeah.
And what. What are your materials?
Yeah, I brought a book dummy made it through blurb, and I have a bunch of four by five prints. And, you know, I'm not precious, you know, about him. Like, let's. Let's tear it apart. Like, it's iterative. This is like the third version of the book, hopefully 3 of versions, you know, 31 day, and just get it right. But I have other ideas about using, like, tracing paper. And the front of the book has a tide table on it. And tide tables are. They kind of chart the high and the low of the tides. And I actually found the tide table of the day my mother passed away, and I have that on the COVID And you wouldn't know what it is unless you're nautical, you know, oriented.
You might not notice it, recognize it.
Yeah, I tip my hat to, you know, or make subtle notification dips or whatever of the work. I'm. What. I'm grieving, but I want it to be more of.
Yeah. And. And getting back to the park because the park is changing under renovation. That is. That is sort of this underlying connection to things moving on, things changing.
Yeah, The. The park is going through its own wave. You know, it's. It's going from a very low, and it's going to be gorgeous when it's done. For those who don't know, Rockaway kind of popped off after Sandy. A lot of people kind of refounded.
That's right.
A lot of young people are down there now. You know, some of the actual advice I got today were. Or yesterday was maybe having some more updated photos to show a little bit of the change.
Oh, okay.
Because I was.
You mean archival? Like historic?
No, like, I'm actually. So some of the photos in my. In the book are my photos my mom took at the beach that I. I found after she passed, and I started scanning her archives. And so I intertwined those with my photos, and I'm thinking maybe adding something very modern of, like, the way Reece park looks today.
Yeah.
Cause I kind of stopped photographing about a year ago, and. Yeah, I got some really good. Really good advice.
That's fantastic.
It's a book about tides. You don't see water until, like, image seven or eight.
So that's great.
Yeah. Thanks. Chris McCall.
Nice. Nice. And also, I just. To get back to your IT background, it sounds like there's this also very personal journey you're making with figuring out how to connect with your own emotions and expression in this work.
Yeah. There's a thread in this from my mom passing, and I guess this is part of me processing it. You know, I refuse to just make a print or book and, like, move on. I'm like, I'm gonna do this justice, you know?
Yeah.
But, yeah, it's been. You know, it's definitely. Definitely been a journey.
Yeah. I'm sorry about your mother, but I'm glad you're here and doing the work.
Yeah. And we. I'm really glad you're here.
Thank you.
You know, as someone who sits on a dirty subway train going to work, you know, thank you for keeping us all comfortable.
Oh, I appreciate that. I'm glad to hear it. That's really nice to hear. All right, thanks. Well, good luck with the rest of the week.
Yeah, you too.
All right, bye.
Hi, my name is David Bowman. I'm from Minneapolis. I'm here at Chico with two projects. One of them is called Lakehead. The other one is collection of photos from the Australian outback from 1994. Back home in Minneapolis, I'm a teacher. Primarily for my job. I teach photo. I also teach drawing.
You've done some prison teaching, right?
Yeah, I teach in the TREC program, which. So I travel to state prisons and I teach drawing.
I haven't spoken to a lot of people who've talked about two different. Very different Bodies of work in terms of reviews, does that. Is it sort of cut into your time a little bit in half or how does it work?
Well, so so far, I've been completely obsessed with my most recent body of work, which is Lakehead Project. And yesterday I had a really big review day, so I had four reviews. And I feel like we really took it apart and put it back together by the time I was done. And I feel really good on that. And so now, today, I'm excited. I'm going to show the Australia work to Sage, and I feel really excited about that.
That's right here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because she's like, my impression of some of her work is that some of it. She's got some older bodies of work that she shows now, and I think that would be really fun to have her be the first person to look at it, because it just seems appropriate. Yeah.
Well, let's talk about the Lakehead work. What is that about? What's it like?
So the lakehead is a term my dad used when I was little. So I grew up in Chicago until I was 18. My dad is from Detroit. My mom's from Green Bay. And so both, you know, they also grew up on the Great Lakes. And then our family was on the Great Lakes. And, you know, my last name's Bowman. And I would ask my dad, like, you know, where are the Bowmans from? Like, where are we from? I mean, I knew he grew up in Detroit, but he didn't really talk about Detroit much because of all the things that happened in Detroit in his neighborhood in the 60s. That's kind of like, happened after he moved away. And his neighborhood didn't really. It wasn't a place to go home to for him anymore. He didn't really.
You're talking about civil rights era.
Yeah, like rioting and building, neighborhoods being burned down. And, I mean, he tells stories about my grandma watching the troops marching down the streets, and she didn't understand what was happening.
The National Guard.
National Guard. And, you know, and he's kind of a. My dad's a great storyteller, so he would tell these kind of, like, dramatic stories about Detroit, but he never took us there. So I didn't feel like it was like my homeland necessarily. But as a photographer, especially a landscape photographer, you know, I just really got. I'm not sure which came first, wanting to photograph the landscape or wanting to know what landscape am I from, you know, but they kind of were together. I always won. You know, I traveled to Ireland when I was in College for my junior year. And I lived there after college because we're like Irish Americans. And I was sort of like, well, I want to check this place out that seems like people tell me we're from there. But, you know, I would get there and my Irish friends would be like, bowman. That's not an Irish last name. You know, there's nobody here named Bowman. So I, you know, I was. I had it in my head like, I want to find out where I'm from. And my dad would say, well, my relatives came from the lakehead. And I thought he was just kind of like pulling my leg, you know, because that's like a navigational term.
Yeah.
For like a river. Like a river has a head of the water, head of navigation. And the Great Lakes are a river, really. They start at the lakehead and they flow through the five Great Lakes and then out through the St. Lawrence Seaway. And since I've always grown up on the Great Lakes, I love the, you know, I think about them all the time. I love maps of the Great Lakes. And I just got the idea of like, okay, I want to photograph this place. But I never thought of it as a concrete place. I thought of it more as like a kind of a thing. My dad said, you know, like the lake had, like, it's that way. We're from over there. So I actually ended up moving to Minnesota. And that's kind of between Minnesota and Canada. That's the source of the Great Lakes, generally speaking. So I actually ended up moving to that area 30 years ago. And right away I started going up there to shoot. And I started. I just got this like feeling of like, this is where we're from up here. But I didn't. It wasn't like this town or this address. It was like this zone because it's a different, like biosphere. Once you get up to Lake Superior, it's like sub arctic pine, you know.
So it changes dramatically.
Dramatically.
Climbing a steep mountain or something.
Yeah, I mean, you're like at the ocean. It feels like the ocean when you get to Lake Superior. And so like that. And that's where my parents met each other. My dad had his first job after college. It was on the Iron Range in northern Minnesota, working in an iron mine as an engineer. And my mom was a nurse. So all this family history before I was ever born, I had heard stories about, not to mention my dad kind of saying that's where his relatives came from. So I kept. So I was shooting it sort of blindly, kind of going with My just gut feeling of, like, what makes me think of what landscape would represent my family and where we're from. And the funny thing is, is that, you know, the longer I worked on it, I mean, there really is a lakehead, right. So I started learning more about there. This place actually. Yeah. Thunder Bay in Canada. It's the next city over the border from. From Duluth. They actually. They call themselves the lakehead. And so I didn't know that because it's almost more of a Canadian term. You know, it's like, I never hear Americans say that. So, you know, I was like, there's an actual place called the lake at. You know, it's just funny how. Because I really wasn't coming at this scientifically like, or sociologically. It was like more like I'm photographing my family's memories and history, but by like sort of blindly doing it because I don't really have. We don't have a family tree.
Right.
So my dad.
How far back can you trace?
Well, I could only really trace back to my grandparents. Right. My dad's parents, because he didn't talk about. It's just, you know, it's a different generation. He just didn't talk about those things.
We just look forward.
Yeah. And so. And he didn't have anything written down. He kind of would say, well, our relatives didn't know how to read and write when they came to this country, and we have no privileged family history. That was sort of what he would say. And since it's my last name, I was particularly interested. It's not that I didn't know maybe a little bit more about my mom's family, but I was always really kind of interested in like my name, David Bowman. Where does it come from? So the funny thing is, so I start, I'm working on this project I'm shooting 8 by 10, black and white. You know, it's a dark room based, 8 by 10 project. And as I'm working on it, all this stuff happens, right. So, you know, I've got teenage daughters and they're really struggling with being teenage daughters and neurodivergence and just things that are happening, you know, things that happen when you're a parent. Right. I'd only been a photographer up to this point, but now I'm a parent, right. And I'm dealing with my family history a little bit. And one along the way, one of my daughters did a DNA test because I didn't want to. I really didn't have any interest in having my DNA outside DNA in some database somewhere. But my daughter didn't mind. And so she did that. And, like, a distant cousin reached out to us and gave us the family history of the Bowmans.
Are they Irish?
Well, yeah. This is where it gets interesting, because it turns out that while the Bowmans were Presbyterian Scotch immigrants to Canada, and my great. So that was my great grandpa, but my great grandmother was a nun, an Irish Catholic nun.
So that's why it's not the name.
It was not the name. Yeah. And so basically, they had to elope to America because she had to quit.
They weren't allowed to marry.
They weren't allowed to marry. And I was brought up like, you know, total Catholic school kid, all that stuff. So to find out that my great grandma was an actual nun just, like, blew my mind, you know? And then growing up Irish Catholic in Chicago during the 70s and 80s, there was. Everybody just talked about what was happening in Northern Ireland.
I said they weren't allowed to marry. Of course, as a nun, you weren't allowed to marry, but was there a. You weren't allowed to be married?
Yeah, the Presbyterians were. These were, like, privileged people, and they're the upper. Kind of the upper class in Northern Ireland.
She was also leaving the nunnery, which was a scandal.
Right. So basically they ran off together, came to Detroit. That's how my dad's family got to Detroit. And she basically erased. That's the other side. Because it was just. You can't do that.
So that's why the Irish history is a little more obscure.
Yeah.
Well, actually, the Scottish was what was obscure.
Oh, I'm sorry. Because we were just told, like, raised Catholic.
Yeah. There was like, you're Irish Catholic. So in the meantime, my project is sort of exploding because there's the riots after George Floyd was murdered, which was really, you know, close to our neighborhood, and the pandemic. And I started teaching full time because I had been doing mostly assignment work for my career, and now I was teaching full time. But now that was also online. It was just a. Kind of a disaster.
Yeah.
And I just kept shooting my project kind of like, without. At that point, I wasn't even showing it to people because I'd sort of. I didn't know what was happening with this project, you know, like, I didn't know what's happening in my family or the world.
Yeah.
I just wanted to get out of the house and be shooting. So I just kept shooting and not showing the work. So it's been really amazing to come here with this body of Work because it's really my first chance to like show it.
And these are contact prints, 8 by 10.
Well, it's, it started as an 8 by 10 print, but. What. Or sorry, as an 8 by 10 project. But once everything started like going off the rails, I was like, I, I was like not necessarily liking what I was doing anymore. Like, it's like where I started, I was struggling with where I started. I started very formal, you know, I got this giant camera and I've got this like pristine landscape and you know, I was very much like, how am I going to develop these negatives with pyro and not wreck them? You know? Yeah, it's like really concentrating on that for the first few years. But you know, once your family and your world starts to like just get like shaken up that much, it's like I was like, why am I trying to do this perfect, Perfect project?
The 8 by 10 requires this somewhat static quality to it.
Yeah, I mean there's that. Absolutely. You have to be on a tripod, you have to be locked down. And so it was sort of like, I don't need a perfect project. And also I don't need a perfect family. I don't need to, you know, like, I don't need to pretend that I'm brought, you know, my relatives are from here or there. It's sort of like it was kind of like the lakehead started as like this concept.
You were embracing the messiness of it all, for sure.
Yeah, yeah. It was like the realness of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's fantastic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, thank you for sharing that. That's an incredible story and I'm glad the reviews were so good and now you're, you'll show the Australia work and we can talk about that another time.
Yeah, definitely.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you.
Good luck with the rest of the week.
Excellent.
Thank you.
Hi, my name is Andrew Owen. I live in San Francisco. I made the 16 hour drive here to Chico and I'm originally from Charlottesville, Virginia.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
What'd you bring?
I brought a box of portfolio prints, 11 by 14 that are a mix of photographs of the climate impact in California over the last four years and really like the remnants of these landscapes in the aftermath of these ecological disasters. But the work isn't just about fires and floods. I'm really interested in the sort of regularity of it. I think that there's sort of a new vernacular that's being defined in the kind of ubiquity of extreme weather patterns. Now it's just across California. Of course, we just saw it in dramatic effect in Los Angeles. But there's a certain quality of living in fear and sort of nightmarish experiences in California over the last decade. And that's just a really interesting tension, of course, with what I think is the sort of frontier mythology of California, which is around it as the land of dreams and opportunity and westward expansion. So it feels like across California we're really rubbing up against a clashing of mythologies, a clashing of ecological systems in flux with human institutions that were built for an older idea of California.
And so I was thinking about. Yes, as you're saying, first of all, how long have you been in California?
12 years.
Okay. So you talked about this living in sort of constant fear of these natural disasters and possibly not natural disasters. Right. Or disasters made worse. Right.
Yeah.
I wonder at what point it becomes accepted that's the life you're going to have. You know, what I mean is it goes from fear to, like, calculated. I think of people who live in coastal homes who build their home six feet off the ground. They've accepted that there's going to be flooding once a year at least. Right. And so they've worked around that. And you can't really work around fire, you know, no matter how much you fireproof your home. But. But there is at a certain point.
Yeah.
Calculated risk and acceptance. The other thing I was thinking about is, you know, the risk reward of those early pioneer days was you get gold and you get rich and you get land and all those things. Right. The risk reward now isn't necessarily that. I mean, unless you're doing something so inherent to California in terms of job or life or something. There are other ways to live. Right. So that risk reward is very different. Right. Do you think about those things in the work?
That's a good question. Well, I mean, I think demographically speaking, there are a lot of people leaving California. Right. So we're actually seeing a lot of migration towards the front country.
Okay.
Boise, Idaho, Denver.
Yeah, yeah, I've heard that.
You know, even northwest Arkansas. So there's also. So the. And calculated risk, of course, comes with the cost of living in California. But actually, my. I'm really interested in centering my work around the ecological histories.
Oh, okay.
So there's not a lot of people in my photographs. I do make portraits as I go on along. I feel like that has further to go. So I didn't really center that work here. But, you know, I studied American history in college and I specifically wrote A thesis about ecological change and a case study within the Appalachian Mountains. And so I think I'm still sort of following, in some ways, this sort of pedagogical, through lines of how is the landscape, which is often overlooked as a. As a sort of repository of our relationship to the world. You know, I really think of these landscapes, even in the aftermath, as they leave behind a whole story that's both. An ecological story. Like, ecologies have their own histories, but we also have our own histories. And I'm really interested in where those two intersect. And then I think the other thing that I'm excited about for this week related to the work is, like, I also kind of make a lot of astral pictures because I spend a lot of time deep in the California wilderness. Like, I can't help but notice and participate in visually, like in the moon and the stars and, like, the phenomenon of sort of the cosmos. And so. Yeah, and it's also very California and very San Francisco to like, bring in the kind of the, you know, deep time and geologic time. So, yeah, I mean, I'm like, I'm definitely. I brought more work than I think I need, but I'm trying to see where. What pictures feel like they build a foundation here.
Yeah. You know, is it primarily kind of aftermath photos, or is it a mix of everything?
Primarily aftermath.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, my process is. I essentially closely follow ecological events, from floods to fires, storms, and that is just like a jumping off point. It will take me to a place. But often there's a lot of resistance, too. Right. There's a lot of. Sometimes the National Guard or police barricades, there's evacuation zones, some of which I can get into, some of which I can't. But often I find that when you're really close to a kind of disaster zone, there's very few stories, the people have been cleared out. Maybe it's hazardous to your health. And I'm actually. I try to focus more on the sort of outskirts and where I think that sort of inner boundary and outer boundary kind of meet, because that's where a lot of things get pushed out to. And there's a lot you can tell about a place or a story of a kind of. That sort of moment of transformation kind of happens at that intersection.
Yeah.
So I spend a lot of time actually on the outskirts because I think that there's a richer observational terrain there.
And then in terms of connecting it to history.
Yeah.
Is that primarily text or, like, how.
Well, in one case, I actually stood and made A photograph of a moonbow in Yosemite, where I thought Carlton watkins stood in 1872. And I made another picture from Swinging Bridge, where Stephen Shore photographed in Yosemite. And those are. I would not say that that's a major part of the work, but.
And that might only speak to a small community.
Yeah, totally. But I'm very aware of the kind of lineage and I want to like. And those pictures live in my mind. And they are, in some ways a kind of a counterpart, you know, to a much different mythology. And I'm interested in being in conversation with that, but also changing it.
Yeah.
You know, because it's a different time. It's a different climactic regime that we live in. So, yeah, I'm very much interested in American history. Anyway, that was my subject, and then photographic history, for sure. So it can be a little hard to find my place.
No, right. Right.
Within that bigger conversation.
And then now you're throwing in the mix the astral photography, which I actually could see this almost like, horizon line between them, like the disaster and then this sort of peace above it, you know, like. Or aspiration or hopeful or something. Right. Like, I could see, like, almost like a horizon line comparison between the two. Yeah.
And also because of this work is also a sort of ecological history. You know, the ecologies have different frameworks for time.
Right.
They're working on geologic history.
They're working on very different times.
And so the picture of the stars also helped me kind of communicate that idea that, like. And the project title is In Light Years. Because I'm interested in this idea of, like, astronomical measurements for a kind of, like, experience of time that we can't ourselves live through. But also, we are of the landscape, too.
Yeah.
So, yeah, there's a lot of tensions there. I mean, we can do a lot.
Of damage in a very short amount of time.
We can.
Yeah. Astrologically speaking. Yes, definitely.
Yeah.
Well, that's great. Well, thank you.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
And the reviews have been good.
Yeah, pretty good. I just actually came out of a pretty brutal one, which was awesome.
Yes.
And brutal. Glad to hear that sense of, like.
I mean, not that it was brutal. I'm glad to hear you appreciate the. That kind of critique. Like, it can't just all be, like, good news. Yeah.
But you know why it was brutal is because the feedback that I got from the previous three oriented me towards an edit, like a first edit that I thought was really strong, and it didn't resonate with this last person.
Okay. Oh, so that is the extra experience of many different reviewers. Yeah.
So it's not like I went, like, you know, way off the grid. It's actually, I thought I was building off of other feedback, and now it's like, ooh, it feels like it's missing something.
Right, right.
That was really helpful.
Yeah. That's great. Well, good luck with the rest of the week.
Appreciate it.
Thank you so much. Good to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
All right, bye. Real Photoshow is produced by me, Michael Chovendalton. Music by Matteo Chovendalton and Jim Raimundo. If you like the show, please rate and review with all the stars on your listening platform.